The new AIA Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Pledge challenges architecture firms to make resilience a more consistent part of their practice. LEED v5 helps translate that commitment into project-level requirements, including the required Climate Resilience Assessment. Green Badger’s free Signals tool gives teams a faster way to find relevant location-specific data and begin that assessment.
AIA introduced its Risk Reduction and Resilience pledge during Climate Week NYC with a call for firms to work with clients, consultants, stakeholders, and communities to consider current and future risks. The goal is to help clients set priorities and make informed decisions about investments that could improve resilience.
That conversation needs to happen early. A project’s exposure to flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, or other hazards can affect decisions about the site, building systems, and continuity of operations. If the team identifies those risks after the scope and budget are set, it may have fewer options for addressing them.
From assessment to design decisions
LEED v5 requires project teams to assess climate and natural hazards and identify priority hazards to address through proposed design strategies.
A flood risk finding, for example, is something the architect, owner, and engineers still need to examine the site and the building’s critical systems, consider possible responses, and decide what belongs in the project scope. The data helps bring the right questions to the table while those decisions can still shape the design.
A faster way to begin
Gathering and organizing the information for that first conversation takes time. Green Badger’s newly launched Signals tool helps teams get started. Enter a U.S. project address into its Site module, and it generates workbooks for the LEED v5 climate resilience, human impact, and carbon assessments, along with a methodology and review brief.
Signals brings relevant federal data into a format the project team can review and work from. It labels assumptions, including defaults such as service life and occupancy, so teams can check and revise them. The review brief also identifies gaps that need further attention.
The value is in getting to the project conversation sooner. With a clearer starting picture of site risks, architects can help owners decide which hazards deserve closer study and consider resilience measures at the beginning.
Try Signals and begin your project’s LEED v5 assessments.
